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For people who want to lose weight and boost their heart health, cutting
down on carbohydrates may work better than trimming dietary fat, a new
study suggests. They also had bigger improvements in their cholesterol
and triglyceride levels, the research team reports in the Sept. 2 issue
of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

David Harmon :
For people who want to lose weight and boost their heart health,
cutting down on carbohydrates may work better than trimming dietary
fat, a new study suggests.

Is this a study on human psychology, human physiology, medicine or
physics?

I have gained lots of weight and lost lots of weight, and you only need
one principle to explain the process: energy in -- energy out.

Psychological issues are important, of course. Feeling the cravings and
hunger for weeks on end, possibly for the rest of your life!, may be
more than most people can take. Also, it can be socially tricky to forgo
food or drinks because of your diet.

Physiological issues can come in, too. Some people crash or get
headaches unless they maintain a steady blood sugar level.

Medically, you want to be sure you get enough nutrients and don't lose
weight too fast.

Most importantly, don't trust your body. It will do its utmost to make
you fat. I have found it useful to count every calory and put a "price
tag" on different forms of exercise. Nintendo's Wii Fit keeps a record
of the weight every day.

Lewis :
Marko Rauhamaa was all, like:
I have gained lots of weight and lost lots of weight, and you only
need one principle to explain the process: energy in -- energy out.

Not true. Your body can only use dietary fat for immediate energy
needs, it cannot store it. If you eat only fat, you will 1) lose a lot
of weight very fast and 2) die.

Still, the equation holds. If you expend more energy than you take in,
you will lose weight. People who are desperately complaining that they
can't seem to lose weight aren't methodical about their calories. Not
blaming them, it can be tough, only stating the thermodynamical truth.

(There are conditions where fluids build up in the body. I'm not
considering that "weight" in the sense of this thread.)

Marko Rauhamaa was all, like:
I have gained lots of weight and lost lots of weight, and you only
need one principle to explain the process: energy in -- energy out.

Not true. Your body can only use dietary fat for immediate energy
needs, it cannot store it. If you eat only fat, you will 1) lose a lot
of weight very fast and 2) die.

Still, the equation holds. If you expend more energy than you take in,

you will lose weight. People who are desperately complaining that they

can't seem to lose weight aren't methodical about their calories. Not

blaming them, it can be tough, only stating the thermodynamical truth.

You seem to believe that all people have identical metabolism. That
isn't true. Some people have metabolic resistance, and are predisposed
to easily gaining weight. I've seen so many people in my lifetime
that struggle to lose weight, aren't eating a lot and they can't lose
weight. Others can eat more food and even though the exercise levels
are about the same, they don't gain weight.

The other factor you ignore is that it's not just the calorie value
of what you eat. If you eat fat, you quickly become satiated and you
remain that way for a long time. If you eat refined carbs, you can eat
a lot more without feeling full and two hours later, with the
resulting oscillation in blood sugar, you're hungry again. That's why
on LC, eg Atkins, you don't have to count calories, you don't feel hungry,
and you lose weight.

The study showed that it works. And those folks were supposed to
consume 40g of carbs a day, but they actually were consuming 130g by
the end of the study and they still lost substantially more weigh than
those counting calories.

Lewis :
Marko Rauhamaa was all, like:
Still, the equation holds. If you expend more energy than you take in,
you will lose weight.

It is simply not that simple. If you deprive your body of sufficient
nutrition, your body slows down its metabolism and goes into
'starvation' mode.

And? What's wrong with the 'starvation mode'? What bodily functions are
left undone?
If you continue doing this, you will lose weight, but unless you
continue to starve yourself the weight will return (and very quickly)
and will probably exceed your starting weight.

The solution is to diet (in order to maintain your weight) till the day
you die.

Your body *wants* to get fat again, badly. The moment you stop dieting
and start trusting the instincts, you start getting fat because
overeating will only make you feel good.

Marko Rauhamaa was all, like:
Still, the equation holds. If you expend more energy than you take in,
you will lose weight.

It is simply not that simple. If you deprive your body of sufficient
nutrition, your body slows down its metabolism and goes into
'starvation' mode.

And? What's wrong with the 'starvation mode'? What bodily functions are

left undone?

What's wrong with starvation mode is that it's virtually impossible for
people to keep up with for even weeks, let alone a lifetime. Hunger is
a powerful, built-in survival mechanism designed to make you eat and
people don't live in cages. When you're counting calories and hungry,
it's almost impossible not to wind up going off the diet. It's like
trying not to drink when your body is screaming for water.

If you continue doing this, you will lose weight, but unless you
continue to starve yourself the weight will return (and very quickly)
and will probably exceed your starting weight.

The solution is to diet (in order to maintain your weight) till the day

you die.

Easy to do on LC. Almost impossible to do on low cal, for most people.

Your body *wants* to get fat again, badly. The moment you stop dieting

and start trusting the instincts, you start getting fat because

overeating will only make you feel good.

Marko

You should try LC and you'll see the remarkable difference. There is no
feeling hungry, no starvation. That is the beauty of it. And that's the
main reason why the people in that study that did LC lost 3 times as much
weight as those on low fat. And they were not even on what I would call
a real LC diet. By the end of a year, they were consuming 130g of carbs
a day. I'd call it reduced carb, but it still worked far better than
low cal.

Those probably aren't the definitive sources on the subject, but it's what I
could find. I didn't find any reference that says dietary fat can't be converted into body fat. It also sounds unlikely from an evolution standpoint. You would think humans would have evolved so that any source of food can be converted into stored fat for survival. To not be able to store
readily available fat from a killed animal would seem to be a potentially
fatal flaw.

You can lose weight by limiting calories, but that starves your body so

you tend to 'rubber band' the weight back on. You can lose weight by

exercising more, but you tend to need more calories, so you eat more

and then you stop exercising and the weight comes back. You can

eliminate carbs which means you can eat anything you want to that

contains no carbs (as much fat and protein as you want), but as soon as

you start eating carbs again, the weight comes back.

So, you can starve yourself of calories, exercise a lot, or eliminate

carbs. Any ne of them will cause you to lose weight, but the worst

choice is limiting calories.

+1

The BEST option seems to be exercise and eliminating carbs.

I would rephrase that to a low carb diet and exercise. You don't have
to eliminate carbs and that feeds into the classic stereotype that the
media and "experts" love to use against LC. They show fridges overflowing
with nothing but bacon, steak, and eggs, plates full of meat and not
a vegetable or fruit in sight. With the most popular LC plan, Atkins, even
from day one you can have 20g of carbs a day. After 2 weeks it's slowly
increased as you continue to lose weight. Long term, how many carbs you
can have depends on your metabolism. But many can have 100g a day or so
with no problems. That's still probably 1/4 of the carbs a typical American
has in a day.